Katt Williams Says Shopkeeper Called Him N-Word

Katt Williams says a Georgia shopkeeper caused the fur to fly Monday when he dropped a racial slur during a confrontation that led to the comedian's arrest.

"He used the N-word on the last day of black history month," Williams said in a video interview posted Tuesday on TMZ.com.

The entertainer, whose real name is Micah Williams, was arrested on a battery charge in Georgia on Monday after the staffer at Leslie's Pool Supplies in Gainsville told cops Williams punched him around 11:30 a.m. Williams, 44, was booked and released in time to make a separate court hearing Tuesday for an unrelated criminal case in southern California.

It was outside the Tuesday hearing that Williams said the store employee was to blame.

"He thought that when he was having a conversation with me that I was in his pool store to rob it," Katt told TMZ. "When I put 30 items on the counter, he then thought it was just a ploy to distract him."

Williams claimed he put fifteen $100 bills on the counter in an apparent gesture to prove he didn't need to shoplift, and the store employee allegedly scooped up the cash and put it in his pocket.

When Williams asked for his money back, the unidentified man told him he was new to the job, didn't care about losing it and wanted Williams to leave, the comedian claimed.

"I said, 'I can't get out of the store without my packages or without my money,'" Williams told TMZ. "He said, 'Oh, you can get out the store, or you can go to jail.'"

That's when the employee allegedly used the N-word, Williams claimed.

The interview excerpts posted on TMZ didn't include a denial from Katt that he punched the man, but they elaborated on Williams' decision to go outside and wait for cops while lying on the ground.

"So Katt Williams did what Katt Williams had to do as a black man that is self-employed. And Katt Williams went out to the middle of the street and assumed the position so that the hard-working police officers that ran up on him with nine police cars and guns drawn understood that they weren't dealing with a criminal," Williams said, referring to himself in the third person.

"This is my 19th visit to Atlanta, and I'm not from there. Now Georgia no longer gets the comedy of Katt Williams," he said.

A female employee who answered the phone at the pool supply store Tuesday referred questions to an executive at the company's corporate office in Phoenix.

A message for the executive was not immediately returned Tuesday.

Gainesville police have confirmed Williams was on the ground with his hands behind his back when police arrived.

A store employee told officers that Williams was in the store with two women and threw a pair of goggles during the fight, Sgt. Kevin Holbrook said.

Williams then went behind the counter and punched the employee at least once, the alleged victim told police.

Williams was booked into jail at 1:34 p.m. and faces a misdemeanor battery charge, authorities said.

The stand-up comic has a long history of run-ins with the law, including arrests for inciting a bar fight and leading cops on a bizarre street chase while driving a three-wheel motorcycle.

His Tuesday case in Los Angeles County Superior Court stems from a 2014 fight with a man near LAX Airport.

Williams also is charged alongside co-defendant Suge Knight in a case involving the alleged robbery of a high-end camera from a press photographer in 2014.